![]() For example, Spotify-curated playlists with chill in the title span all sorts of genres, from country to classical to R&B to 80s music: the last of which includes songs by Madonna, Ryuichi Sakamoto, U2, the Durutti Column, Miami Sound Machine and the Neville Brothers that have nothing sonically in common except that they are toned-down versions of these artists’ otherwise widely divergent styles. But even though Sheeran’s tame romanticism may feel less toxic than the slightly skeevy masculinity of bro-step, chill is less a step towards equality and more an update on gender and race stereotypes.īeyond a general swing away from early 2010s maximalism and transgressiveness, the kinds of music described as chill have no consistent musical identity that would reliably distinguish it from anything else (this is one thing that distinguishes chill from ambient, which is a genre with more or less consistently identifiable characteristics). On the one hand, in the post-#MeToo era, chill masculinity seems infinitely preferable to so-called “toxic masculinity”, which is predatory and self-destructive. Like its ancestor cool, chill does double duty as a prestige marker. Critics heard this musical maximalism as an analog of what Cameron Crowe called, in his Rolling Stone interview of Styles, “ the white noise of adulation” and “mania” of teen girl fandom. ![]() Compared to this chill status quo, Harry Styles’ Sign of the Times, with its chain reaction of four big climaxes in a minute, sounded to critics like “wild melodramatic balladry” and – in this paper – “a bombastic slice of bombastic piano pop that builds bombastically to a bombastic ending”. In 2017 the Billboard Hot 100 was dominated by songs like Shape of You, Despacito, and Post Malone’s Rockstar, all of which emphasised a steady groove over flashy climaxes. ![]() Chill is the ability to reign in feminine and feminised excess. As cultural critic Alana Massey argues: “Chill is a sinister refashioning of ‘Calm down!’ from an enraging and highly gendered command into an admirable attitude”, and Vice writer Alison Stevenson explains that “being a chill woman is the opposite of being a hysterical one”. defines “chill” as the “ability to act in a rational manner” such that one refrains from excess, and its examples of “ no chill” highlight negative stereotypes about women, like being overly invested in a romantic partner (“When a girl bases her every choice on a single guy she likes”). Contemporary pop treats getting hyped as just another kind of low-status, low-reward women’s work But chill has also become subtly toxic, a way of dis-identifying with attributes associated with femininity, like the enthusiasm of teenage girls, the most maligned sector of the pop music audience. When I searched for the term on Spotify, two of the top six playlist results were identified as music for studying (“ Chill Lofi Study Beats” and “ Chillhop Study Beats”). Chill pop songs are a form of self-medication to take the edge off in a world in which it seems sexual predators are everywhere, Nazis feel empowered and millennials’ financial fortunes are suffering.Ĭhill also mimics the use of anti-anxiety medication to maintain productivity during anxiety-producing circumstances. Contemporary pop audiences eschew the shock-and-awe of bro-step in favour of songs such as Shape of You, whose vaguely Caribbean groove cycles without much flux in energy or intensity, as if embodying singer Ed Sheeran’s trademark gentle white masculinity, which is romantic but not exactly sexual. This shift had led artists such as Lana Del Rey, Kygo and the Weeknd to write songs that emphasise what Richards calls “a smoothness, a softness, a steadiness”. It was, as he put it: “The end of an era.”Ĭan’t stop … reformed party monster Miley Cyrus at the 2015 MTV Video Music awards. ![]() As Slate music critic Chris Molanphy explained, the fact that their mega-hit Closer turns its first “ drop” – the thunderous climax of club-rattling electronic dance music – into a “downshift” signalled a comedown from all that YOLO maximalism. That year’s most successful EDM act were the Chainsmokers, a duo commonly described as “ chilled-out” and “ lukewarm”. There was Ludacris ft Usher and David Guetta’s Rest of My Life with its soaring notes and Nietzsche-via-Kanye lines about cheating death and getting stronger, LMFAO’s apocalyptic Party Rock Anthem and Miley Cyrus’s nihilistic We Can’t Stop, which doubled as celebration and cry for help.īut by 2016, YOLO was out and chill was in: “Chill pop is the new music trend that isn’t going anywhere,” read one headline in August 2016. People wore T-shirts and baseball hats emblazoned with neon “YOLO”s (You Only Live Once) and listened to hyper-climactic pop bangers and rap odes to “molly” (the millennial term for MDMA). I n the early 2010s, pop culture was at the peak of a maximalist high.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |